Marketing consulting firm Copernicus and Carat North America's Advanced Analytics Group announced a partnership under the Copernicus organization today. Together, the two Aegis Dentsu companies aim to fuse consumer insights and marketing analytics to provide more effective marketing strategies to users.

"We're hearing more and more clients say they want to organize around the consumer, and make better planning decisions based on deep knowledge of their customers," Doug Ray, CEO of Carat, says. "At the same time, they say they haven't figured out how to make the insights coming from their marketing research and analytics groups work together in the way they need them to in order to make better decisions."

"By better understanding your target and how they shop and buy, you ensure your forward-looking analytics, modeling, and simulation tools will get your brand where you want it to go," Mike Vitti, chief operating officer of Copernicus and team leader of the Advanced Analytics practice, adds.

Among the customized services the firm will offer, marketing mix optimization solution Copernicus Computational Modeling (CCM) will allow marketers to better understand how specific target segments make decisions and identify the bought, owned, and earned media that will influence behavior along the path to purchase. In addition, CCM can test potential marketing strategies and tactics among market segments to identify the marketing and media plan that maximizes ROI, as well as assess how changes to strategic and tactical elements influence sales, brand equity, and customer behavior.

The tool can also help marketers prepare for competitive response by simulating marketing and media scenarios, and allows them to develop and plan marketing activities in a consumer-centric way.

To further develop CCM, Copernicus is sourcing expertise from across the Aegis Dentsu network. The firm has asked RoundarchISOBAR for data warehousing, management, and visualization capabilities, and has reached out to Data2Decisions for supplemental ROI analyses.

"We are building on our core expertise in ways that are highly relevant and valuable to our clients," Vitti says. "We want to make it easier for our clients to use research and data in ways that produce considerable advantage to their business."